Many
of the inventions concerned with telecommunications spent some time
languishing on the sidelines before society found a profitable use for
them. The fax machine was certainly no exception. The patent for the fax
machine was granted on 27 May 1843, 33 years before the patent was given
for the telephone.

The
inventor was a Scotsman called Alexander Bain. He was apprenticed to a
clockmaker in Wick where he also invented the first electric clock which
was powered by an electromagnet propelling a pendulum. He patented the
fax machine on his move to London. As usual, this innovation was slow to
take off. The first commercial fax service was opened between Paris and
Lyon in 1865 and they were called pantélégraphes. Faxes really came into
their own in 1906 when they found their first major use, to transmit
photos for newspapers.

The
way that a fax machine works is very simple. The page to be sent is
divided into strips. Each line is then broken up into black and white
segments which can then be sent like the dots and dashes of Morse Code
and put together at the other end. Digital fax machines have only
changed this principles slightly. Pages are now divided into tiny
squares called Pels, each of which can be either black or white.

BAIN, ALEXANDER (1810-1877), the author of
several important telegraphic inventions, the chief of which was the
automatic chemical telegraph, was born in the parish of Watten,
Caithness-shire. After having served as apprentice to a clockmaker at
Wick, he came up to London in 1837 as a journeyman. He was led, bv
lectures which lie attended at the Adelaide Gallery, to apply
electricity to the working of clocks, and was one of the first to devise
a method by which a number of clocks could be worked electrically from a
standard time-keeper, though the credit of this invention is claimed by
Wheatstone as well as by Bain. It is doubtful, again, whether he was the
inventor of the first printing telegraph, as this too is disputed. In
both cases he was unquestionably very earty in the field. He discovered
independently the use of the earth circuit, but here he was certainly
anticipated by Steinkeil. Electric fire-alarms and sounding apparatus
were also among his inventions. His most important invention was the
chemical telegraph of 1843 previously mentioned. This apparatus could be
worked at a speed hitherto impossible, and its invention certainly
entitles Bain to the credit of being the pioneer of modern high-speed
telegraphy. It is stated that the rate at which the apparatus was
capable of working was discovered accidentally, in consequence of the
breaking of a spring during an experiment. The machine ran down, but the
message was nevertheless properly received. Perhaps the most valuable
part of the invention consisted in the use of strips of perforated paper
for the. transmission of the message. This contrivance was long after
adopted by Wheatstone, and is in use in all the existing high-speed
systems of telegraphy. He received as much as 7,000l for his telegraphic
patents, but the money was wasted in litigation, and he died a poor man.
Intemperance was another cause of his non-success in life. In 1873 he
received a grant from the Royal Society of 1507, and at the time of his
death he was supported by a government pension of 807 a year.

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